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| Report: Russian Muslim Group Declares Holy War Aga |
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| Halima |
| 04/04/03 at 07:31:55 |
| Report: Russian Muslim Group Declares Holy War Against United States The Associated Press Moscow, Apr. 3--(AP) Russia's top mufti said Thursday that his organization had declared a jihad, or holy war, against the United States, but the head of a rival Islamic authority said he wouldn't support the move. Supreme Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin wouldn't say what specific actions the fight would take, but said the first results would be visible within two or three days.``Russian Muslims have levers of efficient influence on the United States,'' the Interfax news agency quoted Tadzhuddin as saying. ``For instance, we will raise donations for a fund and use the money to buy weapons for fighting America and food for the people of Iraq.'' A spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office, Leonid Troshin, said later that prosecutors would investigate Tadzhuddin's organization. Interfax quoted Sergei Nikulin, a Russian Justice Ministry official in charge of security legislation, as saying that the move would not contradict Russian law if it remained a demonstration of moral and material support for fellow Muslims. However, any attempt to buy weapons and ship them to Iraq would be punishable by law, Nikulin warned. Ravil Gainutdin, the head of the Council of Russian Muftis, a group that rivals Tadzhuddin's, condemned the call for a jihad. ``The Council of Russian Muftis notes with deep regret that among Russian Muslims there are those who seek not peace in Iraq, but a third world war,'' he said in a statement. He added that a Russian religious organization had no right to raise money for weapons to be used against a country with which Russia is not at war. Tadzhuddin, who heads the Central Islamic Department of Muslims of Holy Russia, said Russian Muslims had declared their last jihad against Nazi Germany after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, according to Interfax. An estimated 20 million of Russia's 145 million population are Muslims. According to some analysts, the Kremlin's tough opposition to the war in Iraq has stemmed partly from concern that the fighting could rock Russia's internal stability and fuel Islamic extremism. |
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